17 Jul 08

The conference will look at the risks of events like volcanic eruptions which could seriously threaten human well-being on a global scale

Will the human species survive the 21st century? What are the biggest threats to global civilization and human well-being? Are we addressing the right risks? These questions will be examined at a conference hosted by Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, part of the Philosophy Faculty, from 17 to 20 July 2008.

While in recent years, much effort has gone into preventing or mitigating certain kinds of disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and terrorism, other risks have not been studied much.

The conference, ‘Global Catastrophic Risks’, will examine risks that seriously threaten human well-being on a global scale. These could include volcanic eruptions to pandemic infections, nuclear accidents to worldwide tyrannies, out-of-control scientific experiments to climatic changes, and cosmic hazards to economic collapse.

Dr Nick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University, believes that addressing global catastrophic risks as a single field can help us deal with them more efficiently.

He said: ‘Attention is scarce. Mitigation is costly. To decide how to allocate effort and resources, we must make comparative judgments. With global catastrophic risks, the choice is not whether to ignore them or to indulge in gloomy despondency: the challenge is to seek understanding and take the most cost-effective steps to make the world safer.’

The conference will begin to address this need by hosting a number of leading experts on a range of different global catastrophic risks. Held at Oxford University’s Saїd Business School, it is intended to advance knowledge and increase academic interest in the area, and provide a forum to discuss the common problems and methodologies which affect the study of global catastrophic risks.

Global catastrophes that cause more than 10 million deaths have occurred many times in history. They include the famine of the Great Leap Forward in China, the Black Death in Europe, the Spanish flu pandemic, the two World Wars, the Nazi genocides, the famines in British India, Stalinist totalitarianism, and the decimation of the Native American population through smallpox and other diseases following European colonization.

Researchers from the FHI believe some general insights, for example, into the biases of human risk cognition, can be applied to many different risks and used to improve our assessments, and therefore our preparedness, across the board.

A new book on this subject, ‘Global Catastrophic Risks’, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic, will be launched at the conference.